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Overview

Entertainment Weekly's 27 Female Authors Who Rule Sci-Fi and Fantasy Right Now

Winner of the 2017 Nebula Award for Best Novel

Finalist for the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novel

Paste's 50 Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far) List

“The book is full of quirkiness and playful detail...but there's an overwhelming depth and poignancy to its virtuoso ending.” NPR

From the former editor-in-chief of io9.com, a stunning Nebula Award-winning and Hugo-shortlisted novel about the end of the worldand the beginning of our future

An ancient society of witches and a hipster technological startup go to war in order to prevent the world from tearing itself apart. To further complicate things, each of the groups’ most promising followers (Patricia, a brilliant witch and Laurence, an engineering “wunderkind”) may just be in love with each other.

As the battle between magic and science wages in San Francisco against the backdrop of international chaos, Laurence and Patricia are forced to choose sides. But their choices will determine the fate of the planet and all mankind.

In a fashion unique to Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky offers a humorous and, at times, heart-breaking exploration of growing up extraordinary in world filled with cruelty, scientific ingenuity, and magic.

Product Details

About the Author

CHARLIE JANE ANDERS is the former editor-in-chief of io9.com, the extraordinarily popular Gawker Media site devoted to science fiction and fantasy. Her SF and fantasy debut novel, All the Birds in the Sky, won the 2017 Nebula Awards for Best Novel and was a finalist for the 2017 Hugo Award's Best Novel category. Her Tor.com story "Six Months, Three Days" won the 2013 Hugo Award and was subsequently picked up for development into a NBC television series. She has also had fiction published by McSweeney's, Lightspeed, and ZYZZYVA. Her journalism has appeared in Salon, the Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, and many other outlets.

Read an Excerpt

All the Birds in the Sky

By Charlie Jane Anders, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Miriam Weinberg

Tom Doherty Associates

WHEN PATRICIA WAS six years old, she found a wounded bird. The sparrow thrashed on top of a pile of wet red leaves in the crook of two roots, waving its crushed wing. Crying, in a pitch almost too high for Patricia to hear. She looked into the sparrow's eye, enveloped by a dark stripe, and she saw its fear. Not just fear, but also misery — as if this bird knew it would die soon. Patricia still didn't understand how the life could just go out of someone's body forever, but she could tell this bird was fighting against death with everything it had.

Patricia vowed with all her heart to do everything in her power to save this bird. This was what led to Patricia being asked a question with no good answer, which marked her for life.

She scooped up the sparrow with a dry leaf, very gently, and laid it in her red bucket. Rays of the afternoon sun came at the bucket horizontally, bathing the bird in red light so it looked radioactive. The bird was still whipping around, trying to fly with one wing.

"It's okay," Patricia told the bird. "I've got you. It's okay."

Patricia had seen creatures in distress before. Her big sister, Roberta, liked to collect wild animals and play with them. Roberta put frogs into a rusty Cuisinart that their mom had tossed out, and stuck mice into her homemade rocket launcher, to see how far she could shoot them. But this was the first time Patricia looked at a living creature in pain and really saw it, and every time she looked into the bird's eye she swore harder that this bird was under her protection.

Both girls were pale, with dark brown hair that grew super-straight no matter what you did and nearly button noses. But Patricia was a wild, grubby girl, with a round face, green eyes, and perpetual grass stains on her torn overalls. She was already turning into the girl the other girls wouldn't sit with, because she was too hyper, made nonsense jokes, and wept when anybody's balloon (not just her own) got popped. Roberta, meanwhile, had brown eyes, a pointy chin, and absolutely perfect posture when she sat without fidgeting in a grown-up chair and a clean white dress. With both girls, their parents had hoped for a boy and picked out a name in advance. Upon each daughter's arrival, they'd just stuck an a on the end of the name they already had.

"I bet I can make it fly," Roberta said, and Patricia knew she was talking about her rocket launcher. "Bring it here. I'll make it fly real good."

"No!" Patricia's eyes flooded and she felt short of breath. "You can't! You can't!" And then she was running, careening, with the red bucket in one hand. She could hear her sister behind her, smashing branches. She ran faster, back to the house.

Their house had been a spice shop a hundred years ago, and it still smelled of cinnamon and turmeric and saffron and garlic and a little sweat. The perfect hardwood floors had been walked on by visitors from India and China and everywhere, bringing everything spicy in the world. If Patricia closed her eyes and breathed deeply, she could imagine the people unloading wooden foil-lined crates stamped with names of cities like Marrakesh and Bombay. Her parents had read a magazine article about renovating Colonial trade houses and had snapped up this building, and now they were constantly yelling at Patricia not to run indoors or scratch any of the perfect oak furnishings, until their foreheads showed veins. Patricia's parents were the sort of people who could be in a good mood and angry at almost the same time.

Patricia paused in a small clearing of maples near the back door. "It's okay," she told the bird. "I'll take you home. There's an old birdcage in the attic. I know where to find it. It's a nice cage, it has a perch and a swing. I'll put you in there, I'll tell my parents. If anything happens to you, I will hold my breath until I faint. I'll keep you safe. I promise."

"But," Patricia said, more startled that the bird was refusing her protection than that he was speaking to her. "I can keep you safe. I can bring you bugs or seeds or whatever."

"Captivity is worse than death for a bird like me," the sparrow said. "Listen. You can hear me talking. Right? That means you're special. Like a witch! Or something. And that means you have a duty to do the right thing. Please."

"Oh." This was all a lot for Patricia to take in. She sat down on a particularly large and grumpy tree root, with thick bark that felt a little damp and sort of like sawtooth rocks. She could hear Roberta beating the bushes and the ground with a big Y-shaped stick, over in the next clearing, and she worried about what would happen if Roberta heard them talking. "But," Patricia said, quieter so that Roberta would not hear. "But your wing is hurt, right, and I need to take care of you. You're stuck."

"Well." The bird seemed to think about this for a moment. "You don't know how to heal a broken wing, do you?" He flapped his bad wing. He'd looked just sort of gray-brown at first, but up close she could see brilliant red and yellow streaks along his wings, with a milk-white belly and a dark, slightly barbed beak.

"No. I don't know anything. I'm sorry!"

"Okay. So you could just put me up in a tree and hope for the best, but I'll probably get eaten or starve to death." His head bobbed. "Or ... I mean. There is one thing."

"What?" Patricia looked at her knees, through the thready holes in her denim overalls, and thought her kneecaps looked like weird eggs. "What?" She looked over at the sparrow in the bucket, who was in turn studying her with one eye, as if trying to decide whether to trust her.

"Well," the bird chirped. "I mean, you could take me to the Parliament of Birds. They can fix a wing, no problem. And if you're going to be a witch, then you should meet them anyway. They're the smartest birds around. They always meet at the most majestic tree in the forest. Most of them are over five years old."

"I'm older than that," Patricia said. "I'm almost seven, in four months. Or five." She heard Roberta getting closer, so she snatched up the bucket and took off running, deeper into the woods.

The sparrow, whose name was Dirrpidirrpiwheepalong, or Dirrp for short, tried to give Patricia directions to the Parliament of Birds as best he could, but he couldn't see where he was going from inside the bucket. And his descriptions of the landmarks to watch for made no sense to Patricia. The whole thing reminded her of one of the Cooperation exercises at school, which she was hopeless at ever since her only friend, Kathy, moved away. At last, Patricia perched Dirrp on her finger, like Snow White, and he bounced onto her shoulder.

The sun went down. The forest was so thick, Patricia could barely see the stars or the moon, and she tumbled a few times, scraping her hands and her knees and getting dirt all over her new overalls. Dirrp clung to the shoulder strap of her overalls so hard, his talons pinched her and almost broke her skin. He was less and less sure where they were going, although he was pretty sure the majestic Tree was near some kind of stream or maybe a field. He definitely thought it was a very thick tree, set apart from other trees, and if you looked the right way the two big branches of the Parliamentary Tree fanned like wings. Also, he could tell the direction pretty easily by the position of the sun. If the sun had still been out.

"We're lost in the woods," Patricia said with a shiver. "I'm probably going to be eaten by a bear."

"I don't think there are bears in this forest," Dirrp said. "And if one attacks us, you could try talking to it."

"So I can talk to all animals now?" Patricia could see this coming in useful, like if she could convince Mary Fenchurch's poodle to bite her the next time Mary was mean to Patricia. Or if the next nanny her parents hired owned a pet.

"I don't know," Dirrp said. "Nobody ever explains anything to me."

Patricia decided there was nothing to do but climb the nearest tree and see if she could see anything from it. Like a road. Or a house. Or some landmark that Dirrp might recognize.

It was much colder on top of the big old oak that Patricia managed to jungle-gym her way up. The wind soaked into her as if it were water instead of just air. Dirrp covered his face with his one good wing and had to be coaxed to look around. "Oh, okay," he quavered, "let me see if I can make sense of this landscape. This is not really what you call a bird's-eye view. A real bird's-eye view would be much, much higher than this. This is a squirrel's-eye view, at best."

Dirrp jumped off and scampered around the treetop until he spotted what he thought might be one of the signpost trees leading to the Parliamentary Tree. "We're not too far." He sounded perkier already. "But we should hurry. They don't always meet all night, unless they're debating a tricky measure. Or having Question Time. But you'd better hope it's not Question Time."

"What's Question Time?"

"You don't want to know," Dirrp said.

Patricia was finding it much harder to get down from the treetop than it was to get up, which seemed unfair. She kept almost losing her grip, and the drop was nearly a dozen feet.

"Hey, it's a bird!" a voice said from the darkness just as Patricia reached the ground. "Come here, bird. I only want to bite you."

"Oh no," Dirrp said.

"I promise I won't play with you too much," the voice said. "It'll be fun. You'll see!"

"Who is that?" Patricia asked.

"Tommington," Dirrp said. "He's a cat. He lives in a house with people, but he comes into the forest and kills a lot of my friends. The Parliament is always debating what to do about him."

"Oh," Patricia said. "I'm not scared of a little kitty."

Tommington jumped, pushing off a big log, and landed on Patricia's back, like a missile with fur. And sharp claws. Patricia screeched and nearly fell on her face. "Get off me!" she said.

"Give me the bird!" Tommington said.

The white-bellied black cat weighed almost as much as Patricia. He bared his teeth and hissed in Patricia's ear as he scratched at her.

Patricia did the only thing that came to mind: She clamped one hand over poor Dirrp, who was hanging on for dear life, and threw her head forward and down until she was bent double and her free hand was almost touching her toes. The cat went flying off her back, haranguing as he fell.

"Shut up and leave us alone," Patricia said.

"You can talk. I never met a human who could talk before. Give me that bird!"

"No," Patricia said. "I know where you live. I know your owner. If you are naughty, I will tell. I will tell on you." She was kind of fibbing. She didn't know who owned Tommington, but her mother might. And if Patricia came home covered with bites and scratches her mother would be mad. At her but also at Tommington's owner. You did not want Patricia's mom mad at you, because she got mad for a living and was really good at it.

Tommington had landed on his toes, his fur all spiked and his ears like arrowheads. "Give me that bird!" he shrieked.

"No!" Patricia said. "Bad cat!" She threw a rock at Tommington. He yowled. She threw another rock. He ran away.

"Come on," Patricia said to Dirrp, who didn't have much choice in the matter. "Let's get out of here."

"We can't let that cat know where the Parliament is," Dirrp whispered. "If he follows us, he could find the Tree. That would be a disaster. We should wander in circles, as though we are lost."

"We are lost," Patricia said.

"I have a pretty reasonably shrewd idea of where we go from here," said Dirrp. "At least, a sort of a notion."

Something rustled in the low bushes just beyond the biggest tree, and for a second the moonlight glinted off a pair of eyes, framed by white fur, and a collar tag.

"We are finished!" Dirrp whispered in a pitiful warble. "That cat can stalk us forever. You might as well give me to your sister. There is nothing to be done."

"Wait a minute." Patricia was remembering something about cats and trees. She had seen it in a picture book. "Hang on tight, bird. You hang on tight, okay?" Dirrp's only response was to cling harder than ever to Patricia's overalls. Patricia looked at a few trees until she found one with sturdy enough branches, and climbed. She was more tired than the first time, and her feet slipped a couple of times. One time, she pulled herself up to the next branch with both hands and then looked at her shoulder and didn't see Dirrp. She lost her breath until she saw his head poke up nervously to look over her shoulder, and she realized he'd just been clinging to the strap farther down on her back.

At last they were on top of the tree, which swayed a little in the wind. Tommington was not following them. Patricia looked around twice in all directions before she saw a round fur shape scampering on the ground nearby.

"Stupid cat!" she shouted. "Stupid cat! You can't get us!"

"The first person I ever met who could talk," Tommington yowled. "And you think I'm stupid? Grraah! Taste my claws!"

The cat, who'd probably had lots of practice climbing one of those carpeted perches at home, ran up the side of the tree, pounced on one branch and then a higher branch. Before Patricia and Dirrp even knew what was going on, the cat was halfway up.

"We're trapped! What were you thinking?" Dirrp sang out.

Patricia waited until Tommington had reached the top, then swung down the other side of the tree, dropping from branch to branch so fast she almost pulled her arm out, and then landed on the ground on her butt with an oof.

"Hey," Tommington said from the top of the tree, where his big eyes caught the moonlight. "Where did you go? Come back here!"

"You are a mean cat," Patricia said. "You are a bully, and I'm going to leave you up there. You should think about what you've been doing. It's not nice to be mean. I will make sure someone comes and gets you tomorrow. But you can stay up there for now. I have to go do something. Goodbye."

Patricia didn't look back. She heard Tommington yelling for a long time, until they crossed a big line of trees. They got lost twice more, and at one point Dirrp began weeping into his good wing, before they stumbled across the track that led to the secret Tree. And from there, it was just a steep backbreaking climb, up a slope studded with hidden roots.

Patricia saw the top of the Parliamentary Tree first, and then it seemed to grow out of the landscape, becoming taller and more overwhelming as she approached. The Tree was sort of bird shaped, as Dirrp had said, but instead of feathers it had dark spiky branches with fronds that hung to the ground. It loomed like the biggest church in the world. Or a castle. Patricia had never seen a castle, but she guessed they would rise over you like that.

A hundred pairs of wings fluttered at their arrival and then stopped. A huge collection of shapes shrank into the Tree.

"It's okay," Dirrp called out. "She's with me. I hurt my wing. She brought me here to get help."

The only response, for a long time, was silence. Then an eagle raised itself up, from near the top of the Tree, a white-headed bird with a hooked beak and pale, probing eyes. "You should not have brought her here," the eagle said.

At the sound of a human talking, all of the birds went into a huge frenzy of squawking and shouting until a big owl near the eagle banged a rock against the branch and shouted, "Order, order."

The eagle leaned her white fluffy head forward and studied Patricia. "So you're to be the new witch in our forest, are you?"

"I'm not a witch." Patricia chewed her thumb. "I'm a princess."

"You had better be a witch." The eagle's great dark body shifted on the branch. "Because if you're not, then Dirrp has broken the law by bringing you to us. And he'll need to be punished. We certainly won't help fix his wing, in that case."

"Oh," Patricia said. "Then I'm a witch. I guess."

"Ah." The eagle's hooked beak clicked. "But you will have to prove it. Or both you and Dirrp will be punished."

Patricia did not like the sound of that. Various other birds piped up, saying, "Point of order!" and a fidgety crow was listing important areas of Parliamentary procedure. One of them was so insistent that the eagle was forced to yield the branch to the Honorable Gentleman from Wide Oak — who then forgot what he was going to say.

"So how do I prove that I'm a witch?" Patricia wondered if she could run away. Birds flew pretty fast, right? She probably couldn't get away from a whole lot of birds, if they were mad at her. Especially magical birds.

"Well." A giant turkey in one of the lower branches, with wattles that looked a bit like a judge's collar, pulled himself upright and appeared to consult some markings scratched into the side of the Tree before turning and giving a loud, learned "glrp" sound. "Well," he said again, "there are several methods that are recognized in the literature. Some of them are trials of death, but we might skip those for the moment perhaps. There are also some rituals, but you need to be of a certain age to do those. Oh yes, here's a good one. We could ask her the Endless Question."

In All the Birds in the Sky,Laurence Armstead and Patricia Delfine embody two worlds and two often brutally competing forces: science and magic. In what ways do those separate realms keep the two characters apartand are there other ways in which their seemingly opposite powers make them familiar to each other, or draw them closer? How is it that they understand each other so well across such a divide?

2)

When Patricia and Laurence first really get to know each other, they are both deeply unhappytrapped in schools and homes in which they are scorned or even punished for their greatest gifts and for the truth of who they are. How do you think that experience affects the way their adult relationship unfolds once they meet again in San Francisco? Have you ever renewed a friendship with someone who knew you long ago, at a time when you felt your life was at its worst? What was it like to revisit that relationship as an older and different person?

3)

Patricia and Laurence’s worlds orbit each other throughout the book, clashing more often and more severely as their story escalates. Are science and magicas worldviewsessentially at odds? What are the goals and priorities of each? Are there any goals that they share? Could there be benefits to their overlapping or working together, and do you see any examples of that in the book?

4)

The witches’ code of avoiding “Aggrandizement” at all costs seems to be a constant thorn in Patricia’s side. Do you see Patricia as self-aggrandizingtrying to gather attention or praise for her abilities? What is it about her behavior that makes the other witches monitor her so closely? And how does the notion of Aggrandizement balance against her extraordinaryand growingpowers and skills? Why is humility so important to the community of witches?

5)

Laurence’s world, on the other hand, is part of the Silicon Valley culture that celebrates aggrandizement in the constant search for the most buzz, the most celebrity, the most funding, and the most attention. What is Laurence’s relationship to that culture? What are his truest priorities, the goals that he cares most about? Have they changed substantially since childhood?

6)

In the course of Patricia’s story, we learn that the world of witches spans a divide, between Healers and Tricksters. Do you see one or the other power as being stronger in Patricia? What role does each type of witch have to play in the world? Do both groups use their powers for good? If you were one of the witches in Anders’s story, which type would you be? Do you see analogous groups in the mortal world?

7)

The Tree is, in effect, the beginning of Patricia’s life as a witch, and the birds are the ones who first guide her to it. Throughout the book, Patricia dreams of being in the forest, near or searching for the Tree. How do these dreams reflect what is happening in her waking life? What does the Tree most crucially symbolize? What do you make of its riddleand Patricia’s ultimate answer to it?

8)

Guilt seems to be a powerful driving emotion for both Patricia and Laurence. What does each of them feel guilty about? Do you think that their guilt is usually justified? How does it influence the push and pull of their relationship with each other? And how does it affect their relationships with the other people closest to them?

9)

Priya’s disappearance and subsequent reappearance haunts the second half of Anders’s story. What does this incident mean to Laurence? Why is it so hard for him to move past it? What does this scientific mistake say about the things he values mosthis intellect, knowledge, and abilities? How does Patricia’s role in rescuing Priya affect him?

10)

At the core of this story is nature, and the relationship of Laurence, Patricia, and their respective worlds to it. What does Anders have to say about humanity’s relationship to nature? How do Patricia and Laurence’s communities relate to nature? What do they believe about natural powers that can or cannot be controlled by humans, by magic, or by science?

11)

Patricia and Laurence fall in love just as a catastrophic natural force hits the United States, starting a chain of events that throws the country into chaos. After having traveled such a long road toward each other, the two are suddenly spun off in opposite directions by these disasters. What do you think Anders intends by this timing? Is love at the mercy of larger forces? In the end, what does it take to decide the fate of Patricia and Laurence’s relationship?

12)

The reappearance of Peregrine comes late in the story. Were you surprised by his identity? What role has he playedand does he now playin Laurence and Patricia’s lives? Born in their tumultuous childhood, built, in a sense, by both of them, what does he represent? Why do you think he emerges as such a strong positive force by the story’s end?

Editorial Reviews

"The very short list of novels that dare to traffic as freely in the uncanny and wondrous as in big ideasI think of masterpieces like The Lathe of Heaven; Cloud Atlas; Little, Bighas just been extended by one."Michael Chabon

“What a magnificent novela glorious synthesis of magic and technology, joy and sorrow, romance and wisdom. Unmissable.” Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians

“Into each generation of science fiction/fantasydom a master absurdist must fall, and it’s quite possible that with All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders has established herself as the one for the Millennials...highly recommended.” N. K. Jemisin, The New York Times Book Review

"Charlie Jane Anders has entwined strands of science and fantasy, both as genres and as ways of experiencing life, into a luminous novel." John Hodgman

"Has the hallmarks of an instant classic." Los Angeles Times

“Genius....My fave read this year.” Margaret Cho

“Do yourself a favor and go pick up All The Birds in the Sky! You will lurve it.” Amber Benson

“Thoughtful and hip and fantasy and sci-fi all wrapped up. A+.” Felicia Day

“Everything you could ask for in a debut novel  a fresh look at science fiction’s most cherished memes, ruthlessly shredded and lovingly reassembled.” Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

“Read it immediately. Thank me later.” Laurie Penny

“It’s fantastic when someone who is so important in the scifi world can flat-out write as well as critique and analyze.” Scott Sigler, New York Times bestselling author of Alive

“The craziest thing about Charlie Jane Anders’ book is how it remains so intimate and accessible despite genre jumping. All the Birds in the Sky moves from a coming of age story to a millennial romance and then a dystopia  and it’s filled with so much of the uncanny. That includes, but is not limited to, a shapeshifting teacher, talking birds and an anti-gravity gun...A truly fun read.” New YorkDaily News

“A fairy tale and an adventure rolled into one, All the Birds in the Sky is a captivating novel that shows how science and magic can be two sides of the same coin.” The Washington Post

“Anyone suffering from midwinter blues should read Charlie Jane Anders’s between-categories fantasy All the Birds in the Sky. The scenario is (almost) Harry Potter, the tone is (quite like) Kurt Vonnegut, the effect is entirely original.” The Wall Street Journal

“Imagine that Diana Wynne Jones, Douglas Coupland and Neil Gaiman walk into a bar and through some weird fusion of magic and science have a baby. That offspring is Charlie Jane Anders’ lyrical debut novel All the Birds in the Sky.” Independent

“Highly readable and imaginative, All the Birds in the Sky will sing to Philip Pullman fans.” Mail on Sunday

“An entertaining and audacious melding of science, magic, and just plain real life that feels perfectly right for our time.” BuzzFeed, “5 Great Books to Read in February”

“Like the work of other 21st century writers  Kelly Link and Lev Grossman come immediately to mind  All the Birds in the Sky serves as both a celebration of and corrective to the standard tropes of genre fiction. [...] Like William Gibson, Anders weaves a thrilling, seat-of-the-pants narrative with a compelling subtext.” Elizabeth Hand, Los Angeles Times

“Two crazy kids, one gifted in science, the other in magic, meet as children, part and meet again over many years. Will they find love? Will they save the world? Or will they destroy it and everyone in it? Read Anders lively, wacky, sexy, scary, weird and wonderful book to find the answers.” Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club

"Impossibly hip fiction with the voice and cultural inflections of the millennials.... Often quirky and amusing but rising to encompass a moral seriousness and poignancy...an engaging book." The Sydney Morning Herald

From the Publisher

Into each generation of science fiction/fantasydom a master absurdist must fall, and it's quite possible that with All the Birds in the SkY, Charlie Jane Anders has established herself as the one for the Millennials…It's going to be hard for even the most jaded reader not to fall head first into the tale of a boy who builds an artificial intelligence in his bedroom closet, a girl who magically talks to birds, and (among other hilarious characters) their school guidance counselor, who also happens to be an ice-cream-binge-eating assassin…The result is as hopeful as it is hilarious, and highly recommended.

The New York Times Book Review - N. K. Jemisin

11/09/2015A friendship between two adolescent misfits is the catalyst for an apocalyptic reckoning in Anders’s clever and wonderfully weird novel. Novice witch Patricia and preternaturally intelligent Laurence form an uneasy bond as they attempt to survive bullying at their Massachusetts middle school. Ten years later, they reunite in San Francisco, where Patricia quietly practices her craft and Laurence, now a tech-world wunderkind, attempts to manipulate time and space, setting off a battle between magic and science that could mean the end of the human race. Anders (Choir Boy) smoothly pivots from horror to humor to heartbreak and back again, and she keeps readers guessing as to the fate of her two protagonists—and the world. Talking animals and a sentient computer searching for love and understanding tighten the narrative strings. Fans of genre fiction will be delighted by Patricia and Laurence’s story, and Anders’s smart, matter-of-fact prose will appeal to a mainstream audience as well. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 12/01/2015They met as children, both awkward and otherwise friendless but otherwise as different from each other as they could be. Patricia always wanted to be in the woods, where she came to believe she could speak to animals. Laurence was obsessed with science, building a computer in his bedroom closet. Still, the two were allies until Laurence witnessed Patricia's abilities and couldn't accept them. Decades later, the two are in San Francisco, where climate change has left the planet on the tipping point of disaster. Patricia is a part of a community of witches, and Laurence has joined a think tank of sorts that is trying to find a scientific solution to the world's ills. Nature vs. technology: the two old friends are on paths that will lead to unavoidable collision. VERDICT At turns darkly funny and deeply melancholy, this is a polished gem of a novel from the Hugo Award-winning (for the story "Six Months, Three Days") editor in chief of the website io9.com. Her depiction of near-future San Francisco shows a native's understanding (and love) of the city, while gently skewering it at the same time. Readers will follow Patricia and Laurence through their growing pains, bad decisions, and tentative love.—MM

Library Journal

06/01/2016Social outcasts Patricia and Laurence have been friends since they were young, when they dodged cafeteria food that was thrown at them. But when Laurence, a supercomputing genius, finds out that Patricia can talk to birds, even he isn't sure if their friendship will last. Fast forward a few years and Laurence is working for a billionaire who wants to create a machine that allows for intergalactic travel to save humans after they have destroyed their own world. Patricia, meanwhile, has honed her magic skills at a witch academy and is now wandering the city healing people when she isn't supposed to. With the help of smart devices, Patricia and Laurence find love, but the looming end of the world tests their relationship. Give to readers who don't mind a bit of quirky romance like Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park mixed in with their fast-paced Daniel H. Wilson-esqe futuristic science fiction. Patricia and Laurence are awkward, lovable, smart, and dorky, and readers will cheer for them to save the world hand in hand. VERDICT Perfect for fans of The Big Bang Theory, this novel has plenty of appeal for readers of fantasy, science fiction, and apocalyptic fiction.—Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL

School Library Journal

★ 2015-12-09Will science or magic save our world and all the living beings on it? That's the question posed in this science fantasy love story by the editor-in-chief of online geek mecca io9.com (Choir Boy, 2005). Tweens Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead are desperate misfits who find both solace and confusion in each other. Patricia is a nascent witch, waiting for her magic to blossom and destiny to call. Laurence is a brilliant tech whiz building a supercomputer in his bedroom closet. Their parents, teachers, and peers react with hostility to their refusal to conform, but they're egged on by Theodolphus Rose, an assassin masquerading as a guidance counselor. Rose's manipulations separate the two until they rediscover each other at a party in San Francisco years later. Patricia and her fellow witches are attempting to maintain a quiet, unobtrusive balance in a world tipping toward ecological and political disaster but which they feel is still worth saving. Laurence has joined a covert project to open a wormhole to another planet, believing that humanity's only hope is to leave Earth behind. A relationship between these two seems impossible, given their incompatible points of view, until unseen forces help their love along. The author introduces technological and magical marvels in a wonderfully matter-of-fact way. But this lyrical pre-apocalyptic work has an edge, too. Laurence's behavior is often far from noble. His colleagues use violence to defend their inventions, and Patricia's compatriots employ some fairly creative, nasty solutions to people and things they deem problematic. Anders clearly has an intimate understanding of how hard it is to find friends when you're perceived as "different" as well as a sweeping sense of how nice it would be to solve large problems with a single solution (and how infrequently that succeeds). Reminiscent of the best of Jo Walton and Nina Kiriki Hoffman.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Beautifully written, completely original yet not so far fetched as to be unbelievable. Character driven and focused on the relationships between them as well as between humans and nature. I couldn't put it down and read it in one day unfortunately, it was one of those rare and magical stories that I never wanted to end. I hope to see a sequel in the future. Highly recommended!!

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Thoroughly enjoyed.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

A truly exceptional and engrossing book. Every time I picked up this book to read more I was so completely pulled into the story it felt as if I had been dreaming when I had to put it back down again (darn you, thirty minute lunch break!). The characters are fully-fleshed and interesting, complex people that tug at your mind even when you’re not reading. The vision of our future is all too believable and thoroughly considered. Easily one of the best books of 2016.

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